change to color bonus

[Hereno]

i'm going to preface this by straight up saying that this suggestion is something that would be beneficial to me and my alliance, but i think it should be considered on its merits rather than dismissed simply because of that.

 

theoretical basis for this suggestion:

 

the idea behind color stock is to get people to war, fight, etc. over the color bonus. the problem is that the red team is absolutely dog shit because it has a bunch of inactives with next to no strength in a billion different micros that don't matter. this isn't a problem that can be fixed through war or diplomacy; the only real solution from a mechanics standpoint would be to, like other alliances, move colors in order to get a better bonus.

 

i don't see how that's beneficial to gameplay. i don't really see what the point of slashing our income by several percent has to do with starting wars or making politics more interesting. yeah, we've seen people try to claim colors and get shown up, but much more drastic things happened in (That terrible game that is totally irrelevant and I shouldn't be bringing it up anyways) without any income bonus due to color whatsoever, so i don't think we can say that it has much to do with the bonus.

 

now, i'm not saying we get rid of color stock or the income bonus - but i think that punishing an alliance that is loyal to their color but one that happens to be full of inactives is dumb. inactives aren't politically active. they don't matter. they go on grey because they can't even be bothered to log in, and the majority of them are pretty new and not even really involved. if you want to get people fighting over stuff, you have to get people who actually give a shit about the game involved - the exact opposite of inactives in tiers that we're more quickly spending our newbies out of every day that the game progresses and the value of money decreases because of inflation

 

the suggestion itself:

 

color bonus is affected (lowered) by people being on the beige team. the grey team is removed altogether, and/or inactives no longer lose their color after not having logged in.

 

effects:

 

1. this gives people on colors incentive to work together and defend each other, because someone on your color getting stomped directly and negatively impacts your income.

 

2. this gives alliances an extra incentive to get their newbies off of beige and participating in the war of the game; they shouldn't need beige for protection anyway given that they're in an alliance, and using beige for the 5% bonus could easily be remedied by just giving the nations an additional bonus independent of their color for like two weeks or so

 

3. alliances now have an additional incentive to keep inactive members. now, nobody does if they're worth their salt, because the only benefit is being able to tax them, and that is more than negated by the constant raiding of inactives in the lower tiers. but if the members contribute to the color bonus, it might be worth trying to defend them. this is good mainly because someone not logging in for a couple weeks might want to play the game, but if they log back in and they've been booted and raided to hell and back, how likely are they to just be like "!@#$ it" and not bother to play anymore?

[Clarke]

I just want to say the reason there is so many red teams is that it is the first color listed and selected in the dropdown menu. 

That should probably change. 

Edited February 27, 2015 by Diabolos

[MRBOOTY]

Good points overall but I would add one thing. 

There needs to be a way to push inactive alliances off of your color stream

Maybe if noone in the alliance in on the right color

the alliances color is just changed to grey?

That way we could push those not participating out of the fray

And more emphasis is put on the brawlers

[Phiney]

This makes absolutely no sense to me, why make inactives count for more, they're not doing anything, we want to encourage activity, n that involves alliances working to keep people active, which you have to do right now.

[Grillick]

this isn't a problem that can be fixed through war or diplomacy; the only real solution from a mechanics standpoint would be to, like other alliances, move colors in order to get a better bonus.

I didn't understand your suggestion, but I'm going to address it by discussing your premise. Specifically, the sentence I've quoted here.

 

This is absolutely false. The red color currently has eight alliances that affect color stock (nine next week when Alpha Phi Sigma reaches 10 days old). The tenth red alliance, World Order, does not affect the color stock because its aggregate score is below 300.

 

The reason World Order does not affect the color stock is also the reason why war is a solution to the problem of there being too many inactive alliances on red. If the alliances are as inactive as you say, you should have no trouble knocking their membership down to the point that the alliance's aggregate score is less than 300. Once you do that, you immediately have a substantial increase in your color stock.

 

Boom. War is the answer.

[Princess Bubblegum]

So what happens when a nation goes on beige? In the current system beige protection expires after a few days and the nations go to grey, allowing them to be attacked. If grey is removed, then are these nations to remain on beige and remain protected from attack, or do they get switched back to a color? Or do we do away with beige protection?

 

 

Also I prefer my suggestion, which I think would cause more political happenings than this suggestion.

[Hereno]

This makes absolutely no sense to me, why make inactives count for more, they're not doing anything, we want to encourage activity, n that involves alliances working to keep people active, which you have to do right now.

 

Alliances already have a lot of incentive to keep their members active, because active members are what drive the alliance and the game itself. Nobody *wants* people to log in once every 10 days to dump their money, it's just that this is a game and a lot of the appeal of games is being able to play with friends, even if they don't take the game as seriously as you do. Besides... this game, in my opinion, does not benefit from being so hard on "casual" players. They might not always be around but they do interact with others and make the community larger and more dynamic, even if they aren't the driving force behind everything.

 

I didn't understand your suggestion, but I'm going to address it by discussing your premise. Specifically, the sentence I've quoted here.

 

This is absolutely false. The red color currently has eight alliances that affect color stock (nine next week when Alpha Phi Sigma reaches 10 days old). The tenth red alliance, World Order, does not affect the color stock because its aggregate score is below 300.

 

The reason World Order does not affect the color stock is also the reason why war is a solution to the problem of there being too many inactive alliances on red. If the alliances are as inactive as you say, you should have no trouble knocking their membership down to the point that the alliance's aggregate score is less than 300. Once you do that, you immediately have a substantial increase in your color stock.

 

Boom. War is the answer.

 

I addressed this in the OP, but for the sake of replying to your post directly, much of the problem with this is that anybody who is actually active quickly and easily outgrows these alliances. War isn't the answer because war isn't an option; an alliance with 10 people of 30 score each can affect color bonus, but who is actually at 30 score a week after they start playing? And how many of those people want to spend their time raiding greys for a paltry color bonus? Moreover, how does an inactive actually leave the alliance or disband it?

 

So what happens when a nation goes on beige? In the current system beige protection expires after a few days and the nations go to grey, allowing them to be attacked. If grey is removed, then are these nations to remain on beige and remain protected from attack, or do they get switched back to a color? Or do we do away with beige protection?

 

 

Also I prefer my suggestion, which I think would cause more political happenings than this suggestion.

 

Ideally, they'd just go back to the color they were before. Although I guess it wouldn't really matter even if it just chose a color completely at random to spit them out onto, so long as they could change off of it immediately.

Edited February 28, 2015 by Hereno

[Hereno]

thoughts?

Edited March 7, 2015 by Hereno

[Princess Bubblegum]

I don't see the point, especially if these inactive nations are just going back to the color they were on previously. That seems to negate any incentive to try and defend them.

 

Colors should be changed, yes.

 

However...

1) the color bonus is too low for alliances, especially alliances with large nations, to fight over, or even expend an effort to defend inactives.

2) color stocks shouldn't be about protecting inactives, it should be about promoting alliance politics

3) I'm skeptical that defending inactives is going to lead to any significant increase in alliance politics; serious alliances don't participate all that much in raiding and this suggestion certainly wouldn't promote raiding. So I just foresee more stagnation resulting from this.

 

Speaking as a person who raids inactives, attacking them actually reminds the inactive player that the game is here, since they should be sent an email when they get declared on. And I'd say only about 1 out of 50 (if that) even log back on if they've been inactive for more than 2 weeks, though granted that's at lower levels.